Trichocereus

Although there are cacti, you know, there's the San Pedro cactus, which is also, you know, we think of peyote as the source of mescaline.

But San Pedro, or Trichocereus is the scientific name, is the one that's used in the Andes in South America.

And it is a shamanic medicine.

It's called wachuma in Quechua.

I saw it on some prickly pear relatives down there, but it wasn't doing that well.

It mostly occurs in the, the genus Trichocereus and on this genus Eulichnia.

But the interesting thing about it is that it's endoparasitic, so you'll never know that it's in there until it bursts out.

So you can see there's the fruits right here.

It spends its entire life living inside the host, and it doesn't seem to kill it.

I didn't see any, any of these cacti that seemed to be dying from Tri strrix.

You'll see, uh, Trichocereus leucocephali.

Now they changed the genus, whatever, um, in like in the hills outside of Santiago just covered in Tri strrix, and they're doing fine.